New Climate Scare: Europe May be Facing Return Of ‘Little Ice Age’

Britain should brace itself for another freezing winter with the return of La Niña, a climate phenomenon known to disrupt global weather, ministers have warned.The warning coincides with research from the Met Office suggesting Europe could be facing a return of the “little ice age” that gripped Britain 300 years ago, causing decades of bitter winters. The prediction, to be published in Nature, is based on observations showing a slight fall in the sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation, which over a long period may trigger mini ice ages in Europe. –Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times, 9 October 2011

BRITAIN is set to suffer a mini ice age that could last for decades and bring with it a series of bitterly cold winters. And it could all begin within weeks as experts said last night that the mercury may soon plunge below the record -20C endured last year. Latest evidence shows La Nina, linked to extreme winter weather in America and with a knock-on effect on Britain, is in force and will gradually strengthen as the year ends. It coincides with research from the Met Office indicating the nation could be facing a repeat of the “little ice age” that gripped the country 300 years ago, causing decades of harsh winters. –Laura Caroe, Daily Express, 10 October 2011

Some scientists predict that the Sun is heading for a long slump in solar activity known as a Grand Solar Minimum. If this happens, it is possible that Britain could return to conditions similar to those 350 years ago when sunspots vanished during “the Little Ice Age”, when ice fairs were often held on the frozen Thames in London. –Paul Simons, The Times, 10 October 2011

Investment in more winter equipment may not be economical given rarity of British snow, says RAC Foundation chairman. The row over the need for a multimillion-pound investment in snowploughs, de-icing equipment and salt stocks deepened this morning with the publication of a government-backed report using Met Office predictions that successive hard winters are rare. Quarmby said the Met Office remained convinced that the severe cold snap is a one-off phenomenon. “We cannot say this is an annual event,” he said. –Dan Milmo, The Guardian, 23 December 2010

The Met Office is working with academics to try and predict the likelihood of severe winters over the next 20-30 years. The work aims to help transport authorities understand the risks of further severe winters after the coldest December since records began in 1910. But the work was criticised this week by Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. “I would strongly advise not to rely on any 20-30 year winter forecasts,” he said. “The point is that nobody really understands the basic feedbacks and climate dynamics that drive annual winter variability, let alone that long in advance.” –Local Transport Today, 25 February 2011

In October 2009 the Met Office predicted a mild winter because of El Nino. Temperatures in December would be above average, they said. In reality December temperatures were a whopping 1.1 degrees below the recent average. In 2010, contributing to the Quarmby Report, the Met Office advised to assume that the chance of a severe winter in 2010–11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20. Boy, were they wrong! Mean temperatures over the UK were 5.0 °C below average during December and 0.3 °C below average in January. –-David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 10 October 2011

The fact is that nobody knows if the forthcoming winter will be severe or mild. The only wise advice that can be given is to plan as if 2011 is going to be like the previous three winters, and one doesn’t need multi-million pound computers to make it. –-David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 10 October 2011

Snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. –The Independent, 20 March 2000

Green thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That’s a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. In fact, it’s the new conservatism.–Brendan O’Neil, The Australian, 8 October 2011

“BRITAIN is set to suffer a mini ice age that could last for decades and bring with it a series of bitterly cold winters.”

But…but…climate’s not weather…and…cold follows hot…and hot follows cold…and all the models are consistent..they really ARE…hot or cold…so we recommend destroying the world economy…just in case CO2 is causing it to be hot…or cold…or both…or…the sun…maybe…[~~~~~cagw brain overload~~~~~]

It’s going to be pretty grim here in Britain when 40% of our conventional power stations have been closed down under EU edicts, and Chris Huhne’s windmills stop spinning (as wind turbines always do in utra-cold anticyclonic winter weather).

…Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. “I would strongly advise not to rely on any 20-30 year winter forecasts,” he said. “The point is that nobody really understands the basic feedbacks and climate dynamics that drive annual winter variability, let alone that long in advance.” …

erm, right. Tell me again about the IPeCaC models that ‘prove’ gullible warming is real and worse than we thought and what was is it ‘the majority of scientists’ have been saying about 3 extra degrees by 2050 based on models and forecasts?
Hesus wept.

This quote gave me giggle considering all the global warming forecasting that’s been going on:

“But the work was criticised this week by Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. “I would strongly advise not to rely on any 20-30 year winter forecasts,” he said. “The point is that nobody really understands the basic feedbacks and climate dynamics that drive annual winter variability, let alone that long in advance.”

What is worrying is that given HMG’s obsession with “global warming” and all things “green” it is doubtful that, even if we are in a “little ice age”, anything could be done. The shell game is so advanced that it could take decades to unwind.

“I would strongly advise not to rely on any 20-30 year winter forecasts,” he said. “The point is that nobody really understands the basic feedbacks and climate dynamics that drive annual winter variability, let alone that long in advance.”

Really? If I said the same thing about global warming forecasts that predict doom and apocalypse, I’d be struck down as a “denier” or some other such attack.

I’ve been trying to explain for quite some time that loss of arctic sea ice is a harbinger of cold times ahead. Sea ice insulates the water beneath. Once that ice is gone and the arctic ocean is exposed to the frigid cold of outer space with nothing but thin dry air in the way it will lose the heat it picked up in the tropics like a mofo on steroids. Teh far more quickly chilled water then sinks to the bottom and begins it’s journey back to the tropics. The oceanic conveyor belt thus speeds up. Normally this would be a self-limiting phenomenon but the travel time for the conveyor belt is several years so there’s inertia in it. If you get something that causes short term intra-annual cooling (such as a volcanic eruption, and/or a solar grand minimum, and/or back-to-back La Nina, and/or AMDO going negative) and that combines with the inertial cooling inherent in substantial loss of multi-year sea ice, then you have a formula for some cold times ahead. Add on top of that the Milankovich Cycle being in prime territory for glacial dominance and you have a formula for the sudden ending of interglacial periods. Runaway warming isn’t possible due to negative feedback from clouds but runaway cooling is quite possible, has happened many times before, and the earth IS in an ice age at the present time.

So what I want to know from the climate boffins is exactlty how much CO2 we need to inject into the atmosphere to make things like the Little Ice Age a practical impossibility in the future.

BrianR
I can’t wait for the AGW group to claim that a “Little Ice-Age” is exactly what one should expect from a warming world.
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“Co-author Professor Joanna Haigh, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, whose research in atmospheric physics laid the groundwork for this study, said: “Compared with the effect of man-made emissions over the last century, solar variations still have a very minor effect on long-term global climate trends, but this study shows they may have a detectable influence on winter climate’.
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Yep Brian – they seem to be heading that way already !
Solar/UV only affects weather in the Northern Hemisphere during winter, it seems – the rest of the time it makes no difference at all anywhere else !

Thank God for this warning of a little ice age. Coming from the British Met office, that same organisation which has not had one correct prediction for the past four years or so, I am pretty sure that this predicted little ice age will not materialise. Knowing how wrong the Met office has been, most probably it will be a mild winter.

I wonder if Piers Corbyn would have something to say about this. He mostly always gets it right

I’ve just ordered heating oil to top up the tank for winter; the log store is full; the freezers are full, the larder is full. Unfortunately I still rely on an external electricity supply, so I am still reliant on past government decisions, which mean windmills have replaced firm supply – I must get that generator installed..

It was covered on the radio this morning. The interviewee — I think from the UK Met Office — was at pains to point out that the total heat in the system remained the same but was simply distributed differently as a result of changes to the jet stream caused by lower UV. So northern Europe gets colder but overall AGW remains on track. You have to admire them!

Please oh please let this be the death blow to “global (whatever weather they want) panic” I mean I hate for Britain to suffer now that they can’t afford to heat their homes but maybe its what we need.

Can we now look forward to the removal of all tax on fossil fuels in a drive to emit more CO2 and stave off the predicted cooling?? I won’t hold my breath. The crooks that rule us are only interested in solutions that increase their power and/or taxation.

I can’t wait for the AGW group to claim that a “Little Ice-Age” is exactly what one should expect from a warming world.
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Oh, but they do make such claims, Bryan and with monotonous regularity.
You do remember claims that recent record snowfalls, etc. have been due to a warming world because “warm air holds more moisture” (regardless of accompanying record cold temps,) don’t you?

For nearly 4 years nowI have been attempting to draw those very features that are only now being widely acknowledged into an overall scenario that seems to accord with both observations and basic physics.

Well Anthony: Are you also kind enough to provide us the title of that Nature paper in which the article is published? So I can verify and read the source and not some media statements in which I am not interested in. The media has done more than enough damage on both sides of the climate debate.

“The trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future. The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more”, according to the UK Met office (2009). http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090225.html So there! All prophecies of cold winters are refuted by science. Climate science no less.

By the way, did you try to follow that link? Well, you will find that this prediction of Peter Stott (Met. Office climate scientist) has now been deleted from the Met, Office website; rather like the lead character in George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ (the Big Brother novel), whose job it is to respectively delete or alter embarrassing statements from historical records. But if you click on ‘Check for the page in the web archive’, you may still find it. If not, try the national archive at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090225.html

Now, after a succession of mild winters around the turn of the century, which led to the famous declaration that ‘Snowfalls are just now a thing of the past’, we have now had 3 very severe winters in a row, with 2010 being the coldest December since records began! No wonder they deleted it!

I am sure the term ‘climate disruption’ will become prevalent again!
But then again, the current ‘climate change’ term is a perfect catch all, isn’t it? I think we should all keep to the original officially touted title of ‘Global Warming’ – let’s at least keep reminding the bar stewards of CAGW that that’s what THEY started!

Why does anyone listen to these half wits?
It is a bit like the UK budget – leak something beforehand that is really bad so when the real news comes out people do not think it is that awful. Another cold winter but the world is really heating up – yeah right! What happened to the Hockey – get inverted? – did Mann have it upside down after all!

PMSL – AND I’d pay to watch! (though maybe not every orifice!).
On a more serious note, those of us in the UK unable to pay the exagerrated price of ‘carbon’ due to the scaremongering by the likes of Jones et al, will be the ones who actually suffer. Jones and the many other brown nosing AGW scammers (I refuse to call them scientists) have doubtless milked enough from the public funded ‘research’ to pay for their fuel bills!

“…Britain should brace itself for another freezing winter with the return of La Niña, a climate phenomenon known to disrupt global weather, ministers have warned….”

Umm. If British Ministers tell you the sun goes down at night you should start preparing for 24 hours of daytime. They lie even when there is no need to, just to keep in habit. They are regularly beaten by bankers, estate agent and lawyers in truth contests. They would give Australian politicians a run for their money…

I like how they say “300 years ago” when, if I recall correctly, the LIA ended about 100 years ago. I guess if they pointed out such inconvenient facts then it might weaken the global warming narrative and the validity of showing surface station records that are only 100 years old.

in the last 30 years la nina has tended to give us mild winters in the UK, however the sun was very active prior to that la nina gave cold winters.

Last December we had a very cold month but then we had a milder January and February.

Unfortunately the weather is chaotic so their predictions cannot be relied upon (remember the barbecue Summer!).

What is true is due to weaker UV from the Sun we are getting more waves on the jet stream which cause long term blocking patterns so we are now getting longer periods of higher or lower temperatures than have been present for over a century and if the Sun becomes less active maybe the jet stream will move to a more equatorial position. If this happens food production will fall this is not a good outcome, however we have no control over this :(

Not much here bar disgusting insults by the likes of ‘Polistra’ and ‘Iggy Slanter’, the usual snark by most and a good deal of final nail hammering.

Such has been the mill run of WUWT for years, I expect it to continue.

The truth is that these solar UV effects, if they turn out to be real, are regional and that cold in one place is more than cancelled out by warmth elsewhere. In the UK this year the Central England Temperature is running at around a top ten 1C above normal…Expect a year of record global warmth soon is my prediction. Yes, I know what that makes me ‘thanks’….

richard telford says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:41 am
“I don’t think David Whitehouse understands probabilities. If I predict that there is only a one in six chance of a six occurring when a fair die is rolled, am I incorrect when a six does occur? ”

How big, Richard, then, is the chance of two sixes in a row. How big is the chance of three sixes in a row. Express the resulting probability in percent. Compare with the IPCC’s definition of the phrase “highly unlikely”. How many percent is “Highly Unlikely”?

It will take another 10 (+/- 2) years of babbling about climate change due to Global Warming before they get around to selling climate change due to Global Cooling. There is a 20 year lag in the CO2 hypothesis, and they don’t care which way the ball bounces, as long as they can scare people to death.
Look for some really bizzare theories such as CO2 dry ice hail that froze the wooly mamoths, etc in place.
Perhaps a tipping point where man puts enough CO2 into the atmosphere that CO2 thunderstorms become the engines of an Ice Age plunge.

AGW due to Co2 as we know it.. is finished, and they know it too. “Ol soldiers never die they only fade away”. We are now in the intense fading away stage…By 2013 AGW will be a non-existent issue mark my words. Jones, Mann ect will be history, retired or jubilated LOL

I know AW or Gavin SChmidt probably would not want to answer this but I bet that by now there has been a pretty severe drop in interest (hits ect) in the whole climate issue on the part of skeptics as well as alarmists/believers, Some diehards will hang on LOL

Following a succession of cold winters and cool summers (like the notorious BBQ summer), we now have corroboration by the CERN physics institute of the work of Svensmark and others which clearly indicates a link between climate and solar activity. Other scientists suggest that the recent drop in solar activity may herald a new Maunder minimum which was a period of low solar activity, few sunspots and extremely cold weather. In light of this evidence, we ask the government to ensure it is prepared for a sustained period of extreme cold and ask it to urgently undertake research to understand the effects of solar activity.http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/15656

“The truth is that these solar UV effects, if they turn out to be real, are regional and that cold in one place is more than cancelled out by warmth elsewhere. In the UK this year the Central England Temperature is running at around a top ten 1C above normal…”

I’m *very* suspicious about Peiser’s claims that Nature is publishing any such article warning of a return of the LIA. This doesn’t smell right. It would mark a complete reversal for Nature, and that’s just asking for too much, too soon,

Strange that Joanna was so sure of herself on that radio interview. I sent her my suggestions as to how it could work some time ago but she has apparently not considered the possibilities that I raised.

She hasn’t yet responded to this either:

“Dear Joanna,

We corresponded by email last November concerning the above and my
interpretation of what appears to be going on in the atmosphere.

I wonder whether there is any new data since then, in particular as to
warming of the stratosphere whilst the sun remains relatively inactive as
compared to cycles 21 to 23.

I recall that the data then available was only up to 2005 and you pointed
out that the upper stratosphere was not warming significantly at that date.

However you had noted an unexpected increase in ozone above 45 km from 2004
to 2007 and I wonder whether that has continued and whether it has led to
any warming of the mesosphere.

The importance of such matters is that I can only envisage the atmospheric
changes necessary to explain the MWP, LIA and the current warm period on the
basis that the stratosphere cooled in the MWP and the late 20th century warm
period but warmed in the LIA.

The jets clearly move equatorward when the stratosphere warms yet they moved
equatorward during the LIA when the sun was less active.

That implies the reverse sign solar effect that you mentioned previously.

just back from Royal Society lectures…….now this article….now so totally confused that I wouldn’t recognise an iceberg if one floated by my house in London (sea level rise), all I know is that I know nothing

Thank you for your opinion. However, facts trump opinion in this instance. The lack of sunspots coincided with the LIA, and there are copious references to global warming during the MWP in both hemispheres. I don’t have time to re-post those citations, graphs and links right now, but maybe later today.

“The LIA was limited in geographical distribution. As was the MWP. Interesting problems that have nothing to do with global warming.”

There is rapidly accumulating evidence that that is not so.

If changes in solar activity affect the atmosphere from the top down which is now admitted at some pretty high academic levels and in the public domain then it is inconceivable that the effects will be limited only to our little patch of the planet.

Solar changes have global effects if they have any effects at all.

We have observed poleward / zonal jets with a cooling stratosphere and active sun during the late 20th century.

We now observe more meridional / equatorward jets with a stratosphere no longer cooling and possibly warming with a quieter sun since 2000:

Well, there was a study in Nature Geoscience about solar ultraviolet irradiance and lowered temperatures. But there’s nothing in the article about a return to a Little Ice Age. It is about decadal forecasts linked to the solar cycle,

But the work was criticised this week by Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. “I would strongly advise not to rely on any 20-30 year winter forecasts,” he said. “The point is that nobody really understands the basic feedbacks and climate dynamics that drive annual winter variability, let alone that long in advance.”

What? Some sober reflection on alarmist predictions from an AGW apparatchik?

Yes, the literature preceeds the Renaisance observations, and that same literature does indeed paint a global extent of the MWP and the LIA when assembled. Parchment, ink and time were precious commodities, and it had better be worth writing about, or else they wouldn’t have bothered. There were no global theories about climate or weather, and not much in the way of instrumentation. Accurate accounts were crucial in assessing what the trade prospects and transportation routes/needs were.

Well Anthony: Are you also kind enough to provide us the title of that Nature paper in which the article is published? So I can verify and read the source and not some media statements in which I am not interested in. The media has done more than enough damage on both sides of the climate debate.
==========================================================
Here http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1282.html
Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere

My mistake – Benny Peiser is a rational human being it seems. Just me being unfamiliar with him. where have I been hiding? Tasmania. Please forgive me, its 07:30 and I’m just catching up. Need another coffee I think.

Steven Mosher: “The LIA was limited in geographical distribution. As was the MWP. Interesting problems that have nothing to do with global warming.”
Regarding MWP Steven Mosher may wish peruse http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php before he makes this statement again at least with regards to MWP.

If one is going to discuss climate change or claim understanding of climate, it becomes necessary to explain the LIA and the MWP. CO2 really doesn’t explain any of the major climate changes, and cannot even explain the minor changes.

Cooling has always been the danger and will always be the imminent peril. It has been since Mankind stopped swinging through trees. Warming increases bio-available moisture, as it increases frost free land and melts ice, increasing surface area of all water bodies. Cooling reduces bio-available moisture by locking greater amounts of ice in glaciers and poles. Desertification follows.

Warming is a pleasant walk in the park. Cooling is the horror story of Hansen and Gretal, when it was considered better to abandon starving children to the wolves, then watch them die, slowly. Women living alone in the forest were burned as witches. How, a few scientists and NGOs were able to reverse Man’s perception of danger, is beyond my reasoning. GK

They are just the biggest bunch of clowns ever are they not. All of a sudden their thoroughly useless computer model, which has failed, failed and failed again, which would not allow them to predict winters, summers on any other medium to long term weather has shown that the sun, which was not programed in before, will give us very cold winters? PLONKERS all of them.

Shut down that damn UK met office. A complete waste of several million pouns per year.

But, have you heard the one about the alarmist report issued by the Australian Government’s Department of Climate Change? No snow in our high country in 50 years time. Bushfires! Aramgeddon! And just in time to inform the people ahead of this week’s vote on the new Carbon Tax legislation.

Never mind that last year was a bumper snow year, we are a month into spring and Tasmania has snow down to 800 metres and it is a bit nippy in the morning, there is so much water in the Snowy Mountains hydro reservoirs that see fit to dump several gazillion gigalitres down the Snowy River just for environmental flow.

What’s wrong with a brand new hypothesis? Man causes global cooling, because (fill in ludicrous hypothesis here)……..perhaps global____________is caused by our hubris, not our pollution. (fill in blank as you see fit) /sarc

All of the Northern Hemisphere is having brutal winters. A USA ski area has just opened not long after the last to close in July. Why is all this happening every year lately? The Sun is in a grand solar minimum and the Ocean is colder than normal while Arctic Air intrusions are occuring because of negative oscilation. The highlights of the last 4 USA winters included blizzards, the coldest winter in 30 years last year, heavy snow all years, 2nd place 71% snow cover last year, 50F temperatures, frequent freezing past the Mexican border and into Florida, strong wind near low pressure systems, ice dams on roofs http://www.HeatersPlus.com/roofs.html and more will all continue in brutal winter 2011-2012.

This idea of a cold winter already has traction in of all places the Dept of Energy and Climate Change who produced a junior Conservative minister on the BBC to explain how a whole tranche of new benefit monies would be made available this winter for cold weather payments to needy pensioners and others for whom the ROC had become a tax to far.
His embarrassment was obvious as I wondered at the incongruity of a climate change person being wheeled out to explain a cold weather benefit but he need not have worried over the duplicity of his position. It was only the BBC that was interviewing him and the elephant that he saw in the room went unremarked by his interviewer to whom elephants had obviously become a commonplace occurence.

Zac says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:33 am
“It never ceases to amaze me when I look in an atlas to see how far north Britain is. Yet the climate is so temperate thanks to the Gulf stream.”

Yes, Britain is far north. The climate is temperate for islands that far north. However, it is not temperate in a way that a teenager from south of St. Louis might understand as temperate. For example, in the Highlands of Scotland, the sun can rise at nine and set at three. Temperate enough for you?

Oceans a few inches higher aren’t going to hurt New York City. But what do you do if there’s an ice sheet a mile thick over the whole state? Aren’t we nearing the end of the 10-15kyear warm periods that break up the much longer ice ages?

It would appear that the lads from the Met have finally realized that they suffer from their own version of the “Gore Effect” i.e. there is a nice inverse correlation between what they forecast for future weather and what actually transpires. Thus the only hope for the kind of dramatic uptick in temperatures that could possibly reignite the dwindling fires of AGWphobia is for them to predict a looming ice age. In taking one for the team in this fashion they do face the prospect of future embarrassment if their ploy is successful but, given their performance in recent years, they seem to have moved beyond the archaic concept of being embarrassed by poor performance

3×2 says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:46 am
“Ah, more guess work from all.
What is worrying is that given HMG’s obsession with “global warming” and all things “green” it is doubtful that, even if we are in a “little ice age”, anything could be done. The shell game is so advanced that it could take decades to unwind.”

The semantic gymnastics will be fabulous. They can start with the claim that this new Little Ice Age would have been far worse except for global warming. But then they will have to explain why all this Natural Variability suddenly appeared. That will be their next great trick. I can’t wait.

“it has very little to do with the Gulf Stream. London is almost at the same latitude as Vancouver and has similar climate. even though Vancouver has a cold ocean current flowing past it”

London is not Britain. London is about 200 miles North of Vancouver. London is at the Southern end of Britain. The Scottish Western Isles enjoy a far more temperate climate than Vancouver and they are another at least another 400 miles further North than London.

The only thing that can cause this phenomenon is the Gulf Stream, which in recent times has been relabeled the North Atlantic drift.

In the unlikely event the Met Office forecast proves correct… folks may finally wake up to the fact that a trend to lower temperatures is far worse than a trend to warmer temperatures. There will be real problems with people affording sufficient heat, even assuming the energy producers can satisfy demand. The resulting loss of life will not be insignificant!

I don’t think ENSO makes much of a difference to English or European winters – we have had three cold winters in a row, one of which was during El Nino, another during la Nina, and one in between – what matters is the loopiness of the jetstream and how far north or south it travels. The science alerting us to the jetstream being pushed south and flatenning during low UV episodes is at least as old as 2003 when extrapolations were made back to the Little Ice Age and Maunder Minimum (Drew Shindell at NASA – but then I think he got taken off the job). This science was ignored by the IPCC and I might add, the UK MetOffice – I wrote to them about it and who knows, may have sparked their current interest, when writing ‘Chill’…..where I anticipated the last three cold winters on the basis of the work of ‘he who must not be named on this blogsite’ who in a 2004 paper predicted the low solar cycle 24 and that 25 would probably be lower still, with a strong chance of precipitating a Maunder-type minimum. The extra low UV data for the recent solar minimum points to the Maunder Minimum having had the same ‘weather’ patterns as we see now – where contrary to expectations from warmer world theories where the jetstream runs more northerly, it shifts south.

Oeanographic climate experts will know that what happens in the North Atlantic can shape what happens globally – and what happens is that cloud patterns and oceanic heat budgets are affected and the effect is cumulative over time. Something determines the long-term cycles we see in the ice-cores – and their often very rapid rises in temperature in Greenland for example suggest rapid changes in wind patterns.

The late 20th century warming has no doubt been partly or mainly (in my view) driven by the long term cycle peaking – yet many climate scientists who now can say the dropping cycle is counteracting the warming cannot embrace the obvious corrolary that the cycle amplified it in the first place (and cannot possibly embrace the possibility the CO2-effect was not much to amplify anyway and that most of the warming is natural).

As far as I am aware, only ‘he who must not be named’ actually predicted a potential grand solar minimum after cycle 24. I hope he gets the credit he deserves.

Meanwhile the jetstream is more south than usual – over central Britain rather than just north of Scotland, but is kinking up after the flat summer – and the high pressure systems will form and give us another very cold winter. As also in northern USA wheatbelt, Scandinavia and Russia, Mongolia and China, as well as Argentina for the equivalent in the southern hemisphere…..all major areas of food production that are vulnerable. And the world is still not ready to deal with a food deficit.

I’m aware of the misery that an harsh winter can cause, never the less I hope we get it as it will make more people question the BS they are being fed on cagw.
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I also hope the USA, especially Washington DC gets plastered. It will cost me a pretty penny in added hay and grain but if it wakes people up before the next elections it would be well worth it.

Getting new chains for the newish car (old chains/car excellent last year) and a UPS for the windmill brownouts. No doubt road clearing will be as hopeless as last time. Food, shovel, warm clothes in the car, sweaters and hats at home. I don’t really mind making my own arrangements if only I didn’t have to pay the taxes too for the services I don’t get.

If it’s warm, they can say AGW! AGW! we told ya so! and if it’s cold they can say Freezing! Freezing! we told ya so! They may even have sent an anonymous caller to pay Piers to have a peek at his forecasts which they can incorporate into their own so as to have a better chance of saying Told ya so!

Certainly, making noises about the Sun is moving in the direction of the real source of temperature change longterm (Landscheidt, Daly, Sharp, SSB etc is no doubt still a bridge too far) which means……….. (drum roll) ………… that they will even at this eleventh hour turnabout retain their credibility, power to demand homage, and ability to say Told ya so! which after all is their sole raison d’etre. People have short memories and will forget AGW before remembering how ruthlessly the Met Office supported it and crushed dissent… until it saw fit to quietly appropriate the dissenting views as its own.

PMSL – AND I’d pay to watch! (though maybe not every orifice!).
On a more serious note, those of us in the UK unable to pay the exagerrated price of ‘carbon’ due to the scaremongering by the likes of Jones et al, will be the ones who actually suffer. Jones and the many other brown nosing AGW scammers (I refuse to call them scientists) have doubtless milked enough from the public funded ‘research’ to pay for their fuel bills!
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No, No Kev, you have it WRONG!

Get with the program – Jones and Mann will be on the beaches in the Caribbean doing “Research” on the link between global Warming and Malaria all on your nickel, ERRrrrr pence.

I believe that Joe Bastardi has been saying for some time, (Joe or anyone else please correct me if I am wrong) that the people who would normaly talk up or push the AGW angle know that there is a cooling coming. Is this a way of qualiying that cooling within the AGW meme?

Just to add without the obvious already mentioned by other people replying to your post.

1) How can this only be regional when during the instrumental record, the same regions concerned have behaved like wise with global temperatures.
2) Instrumental records since the LIA (1850’s) have showed increased temperatures in all global site regions.

How can other regions warm since the 1850’s likewise with the regions concerned, yet didn’t cool from the LIA in the first place? During the instrumental record the LIA nonsense of regional areas only affected is not demonstrated at all during warming and cooling global espisodes.

I agree with your statement. An addition of CO2 to our atmosphere is not ony benificial, it might save us from the catastrophy of an ice age. It’s pathetic that science spend billions on researching CO2’s effect on weather/climate and we still don’t have a clue as to what causes an icae age. Its an ice age that will kill billions not CO2.

“The Met Office is working with academics to try and predict the likelihood of severe winters […] the Met Office advised to assume that the chance of a severe winter in 2010–11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20.”

I’m actually starting to get quite angry at the people relentlessly & cluelessly pushing the patently untenable assumption of randomness. Perhaps the public is actually going to have to outright strip these people of their powers. My advice to these people: Develop a clue now. Also: Please feel welcome to ask for help. Cordial relations are entirely feasible with the right approach. Best Regards.

I’m not sure I’d jump on the “It’s going to get colder” bandwagon yet. As failed models attest, the climate is a very complex system. I am glad to see some scientists acknowledging to the public that the sun does play a role in climate though.

Most of Norway, and all of Iceland (which also get the Gulf Stream) is further North than the southernmost end of the Greenland ice cap. Yet Norway is inhabited right up to Nordkapp which is on the same latitude as the middle of Greenland. Norway also spans the same latitude range as Alaska. USA spans the latitudes from Cairo to Switzerland, with New York further South than the whole of France.

What a huge difference ocean currents make in one way! What a huge difference the size of landmass, and its latitudinal centre of gravity, make in another way!

The CET ‘Central England Temperature’ has roughly 30 year periods of warming and cooling throughout the data set from the 17th century. These match up with the global temperatures that are available during this period. Therefore at least by this data, England doesn’t behave generally different from global temperatures over decades. Unless the sun becomes much less active over the next 2 cycles (nobody knows for sure yet, then a LIA maybe possible) Anything else this report is just over estimating a normally cyclic 30 year cooling period mentioned above.

La Nina affects winter weather in the UK quite widely from very mild to very severe winters. Usually when the UK has a strong La Nina lasting throughout the three winter months, (December, January and February) mild/very mild winters are expected. (zonal with weather fronts coming off the Atlantic ocean) If the NAO supports the negative phase during the period, coldest weather tends to occur at the beginning of winter and can avoid the mild/very mild tradition. When La Nina is weak during the UK winter, these are the periods prone to the coldest winters, especially when the NAO supports a negative phase during this time. (1962/63 was a famous UK winter example)

The Sun looks after the UK and the Magical Met Office, cos it does things just to the UK (well grudgingly, maybe other bits of Europe) that it does not do to the rest of the planet. So there! We know why we are getting colder, we have our Sun and we are happy, our Sun looks after us! No nasty global warming for us! The rest of you just get off and sort yourselves out, you need to, cos you are getting super, super warm in order to allow the Magical Met Office and the UK to get cooler!

This is what happens when you plot your temperature proxies upside down. Hey the Yamal tree ring proxy said we were going to get lower temps so they snipped a quarter century of data that showed declining temps and spliced on the ‘homogenized’ record. You can hide the decline in a graph, but its hard to do when the decline occurs in reality! They will try though. I guess there was a lot more heat lost in the deep oceans than is good for us – what say Dr T.

Let us see now, we have a falling PDO, a topping out of AMO, and a cyclical change to lower output in solar activity. Even before a fall in the AMO and a peak in the current, lowered solar cycle we already have a leveling out of global mean sea level and global mean ocean heat content.

Dave Springer says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:48 am
So what I want to know from the climate boffins is exactlty how much CO2 we need to inject into the atmosphere to make things like the Little Ice Age a practical impossibility in the future.
============================
I think that R. Gates considers this to be his particular field of specialty. I’m expecting that he will be able to tell you to within 10ppm.

and its only two days ago I was enthralled by a local newspaper advert (Devon, England) stating/including “snow tyres”… To the best of my knowledge, and we visit Switzerland once or twice a year, this is the first time I have EVER seen “snow tyres” detailed in press in the South of England.
but it fits the pattern nicely of having been snowed in for three days last winter.
need a nother windmill ?

The effects of volcanoes on Earth’s climate are well know, e.g. “the 1991 explosion of Mount Pinatubo, a stratovolcano in the Philippines, cooled global temperatures for about 2–3 years.

In 1883, the explosion of Krakatoa (Krakatau) created volcanic winter-like conditions. The next four years after the explosion were unusually cold, and the winter of 1887 to 1888 included powerful blizzards.Record snowfalls were recorded worldwide.

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, a stratovolcano in Indonesia, occasioned mid-summer frosts in New York State and June snowfalls in New England and Newfoundland and Labrador in what came to be known as the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816.

A paper written by Benjamin Franklin in 1783 blamed the unusually cool summer of 1783 on volcanic dust coming from Iceland, where the eruption of Laki volcano had released enormous amounts of sulfur dioxide, resulting in the death of much of the island’s livestock and a catastrophic famine which killed a quarter of the population. Temperatures in the northern hemisphere dropped by about 1 °C in the year following the Laki eruption.

In 1600, the Huaynaputina in Peru erupted. Tree ring studies show that 1601 was cold. Russia had its worst famine in 1601 to 1603. From 1600 to 1602, Switzerland, Latvia and Estonia had exceptionally cold winters. The wine harvest was late in 1601 in France, and in Peru and Germany wine production collapsed. Peach trees bloomed late in China, and Lake Suwa in Japan froze early.[4]

In 1452 or 1453, a cataclysmic eruption of the submarine volcano Kuwae caused worldwide disruptions.

The Great Famine of 1315–1317 in Europe may have been precipitated by a volcanic event,[5] perhaps that of Kaharoa, New Zealand, which lasted about five years.[6]

I am at a loss. Could anyone give me a climate condition that is the opposite of CAGW. They seem to have claimed all the good ones. Is there anything left?…
________________________________________________
YES! A thriving economy and money in our pockets./sarc

This whole thing reminds me of one of those games where you pass on a message with minor alterations until it becomes radically different. The article here is composed of quotes from an assortment of media sources.

Here is the abstract of the article they are starting from:

Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere

Sarah Ineson, Adam A. Scaife, Jeff R. Knight, James C. Manners, Nick J. Dunstone, Lesley J. Gray & Joanna D. Haigh
AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author
Nature Geoscience (2011) doi:10.1038/ngeo1282
Received 18 April 2011 Accepted 07 September 2011 Published online 09 October 2011
An influence of solar irradiance variations on Earth’s surface climate has been repeatedly suggested, based on correlations between solar variability and meteorological variables1. Specifically, weaker westerly winds have been observed in winters with a less active sun, for example at the minimum phase of the 11-year sunspot cycle2, 3, 4. With some possible exceptions5, 6, it has proved difficult for climate models to consistently reproduce this signal7, 8. Spectral Irradiance Monitor satellite measurements indicate that variations in solar ultraviolet irradiance may be larger than previously thought9. Here we drive an ocean–atmosphere climate model with ultraviolet irradiance variations based on these observations. We find that the model responds to the solar minimum with patterns in surface pressure and temperature that resemble the negative phase of the North Atlantic or Arctic Oscillation, of similar magnitude to observations. In our model, the anomalies descend through the depth of the extratropical winter atmosphere. If the updated measurements of solar ultraviolet irradiance are correct, low solar activity, as observed during recent years, drives cold winters in northern Europe and the United States, and mild winters over southern Europe and Canada, with little direct change in globally averaged temperature. Given the quasiregularity of the 11-year solar cycle, our findings may help improve decadal climate predictions for highly populated extratropical regions.

Now does that look like a forecast of a new LIA?

Rule 1: Always look at the original source
Rule 2: Do not believe media reports without checking

I am quite skeptical that Europe is in for 20-30 years of cooling, or anything approaching a “Little Ice Age”. They may get a few bad winters in a row (not all due to La Nina by the way), but by the next sizable El Nino, it will be forgotten. Earth 2011 does not equal Earth 1600. It would nice and tidy if it did, but that would be too easy. Related to this, those who have been following the ocean levels have noted a bit of a drop these past few years. Have you noted where all that water went, and how much energy was transferred from ocean to atmosphere to get it there? GRACE knows. Hint: it didn’t go into building up glaciers. What does this have to do with Europe’s weather? Everything.

Sailed on The Waverley from Glasgow to Rothesay (1964ish) as a wee boy. Was stunned to see, live and in colour, real Palm trees.
—————————————————————————————————————————
Those are not palm trees, they are New Zealand cabbage trees
“Cabbage trees are one of the most widely cultivated New Zealand natives and are very popular in Europe, Britain and the U.S. In the U.K. they are known as Torquay palm.”

[SNIP: SteveO your act is wearing thin. When you learn the difference between hyperbole and the real threats made against climate skeptics, come back. Continue in this vein and you will be snipped. –REP]

philincalifornia says:
October 10, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Dave Springer says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:48 am
So what I want to know from the climate boffins is exactlty how much CO2 we need to inject into the atmosphere to make things like the Little Ice Age a practical impossibility in the future.
============================
I think that R. Gates considers this to be his particular field of specialty. I’m expecting that he will be able to tell you to within 10ppm.
______
? Too many variables. I think it’s pretty apparent that the last “Little Ice Age” was likely solar-caused in origin, and remarkably, and surprisingly (to the ignornant), even the much beloved Michael Mann has stated as much. See:http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zita/articles/solar/MaunderMin04Shindell.pdf

More remarkable perhaps to some would be this quote from this study by Michael Mann:

“These results provide evidence that relatively
small solar forcing may play a significant
role in century-scale NH winter climate
change. This suggests that colder winter temperatures
over the NH continents during portions
of the 15th through the 17th centuries
(sometimes called the Little Ice Age) and
warmer temperatures during the 12th through
14th centuries (the putative Medieval Warm
Period) may have been influenced by longterm
solar variations.”

Wow! How could it be? You must admit, some of you are surprised that such words could have been written by Michael Mann. The level of your surprise (I would suggest) is in direct proportion to your inability to see the bigger picture. Earth 2011 does not equal Earth 1600.
“

“This suggests that colder winter temperatures over the NH continents during portions of the 15th through the 17th centuries (sometimes called the Little Ice Age) and warmer temperatures during the 12th through 14th centuries (the putative Medieval Warm Period)…”

“Putative”??? [That means ‘supposed’]. Mann is still pushing his repeatedly debunked fiction that the MWP didn’t happen. But if there is anything close to settled climate science, it is the historical fact of the MWP, which is ubiquitous in numerous records, and as ice core evidence from both hemispheres.

You’re missing the bigger picture. Mann admitted that the sun influenced the Little Ice Age and the MWP (putative or not, he admitted it was warm period)! This should be headlines for some skeptics who fail to grasp the bigger context. I would suggest, this failure comes about from an over-reaction against any acceptance of the possibility that a 40% increase in CO2 could have any impact on Earth’s climate.

R. Gates says:
October 10, 2011 at 6:06 pm
I would suggest, this failure comes about from an over-reaction against any acceptance of the possibility that a 40% increase in CO2 could have any impact on Earth’s climate.
===================================================
Gates, if you have one drop of water – increase it 40% – you have less than 1 1/2 drops of water….

Steven Mosher said:
“The LIA was limited in geographical distribution. As was the MWP. Interesting problems that have nothing to do with global warming.”

If you can ignore hundreds of records from every continent, and dismiss them all as regional phenomena, how come you believe the opposite proposition (that the climate, contrary to the entire geological record of the Earth’s history, has stayed exactly flat for a thousand years) based on the evidence of one single tree?

You’re missing the bigger picture. Mann admitted that the sun influenced the Little Ice Age and the MWP (putative or not, he admitted it was warm period)! This should be headlines for some skeptics who fail to grasp the bigger context. I would suggest, this failure comes about from an over-reaction against any acceptance of the possibility that a 40% increase in CO2 could have any impact on Earth’s climate.

R., Your fingernails are not digging into that slippery slope very well. And the skritching racket is very annoying. Your attempt at exoneration is ludicrous.

You’re missing the bigger picture. Mann admitted that the sun influenced the Little Ice Age and the MWP (putative or not, he admitted it was warm period)! This should be headlines for some skeptics who fail to grasp the bigger context. I would suggest, this failure comes about from an over-reaction against any acceptance of the possibility that a 40% increase in CO2 could have any impact on Earth’s climate.

So now it’s just a possibility? Have you alerted Dr. Mann or the IPCC?

BTW: Have you accepted the possibility it’s having an immeasurable impact upon the climate?

Have you accepted the possibilityfact that nobody has shown any evidence that the current climate has not exceeded the range of natural variation?

Have you accepted the fact that nobody has shown any evidence that the climate models accurately model the actual climate?

The UK Met forecasts a colder winter…. Okay, there’s gonna be no snow in England this year and wear yer bathers…. It’s gonna be Hot hot hot….;-)

Seriously though, Benny Peiser is the only guy that is thinking clearly and applying scientific understanding in this issue, when he says….”I would strongly advise not to rely on any 20-30 year winter forecasts……..The point is that nobody really understands the basic feedbacks and climate dynamics that drive annual winter variability, let alone that long in advance.”

“Mann admitted that the sun influenced the Little Ice Age and the MWP (putative or not, he admitted it was warm period)!”

But the word “putative” changes the meaning entirely, to mean ‘the LIA and the supposedly warm MWP.’

And I remind you that thirteen years after MBH98, which mendaciously attempted to erase the LIA and the MWP, Mann still stonewalls requests for his complete methodology, data, metadata and code. The scientific method requires transparency, therefore Mann is acting like an anti-scientist. As are the rest of the “Team”. They are pseudo-scientific climate charlatans, in it for the money, the prestige, and for their personal aggrandizement.

Speaking of Ice Ages, does everyone know how quickly the temperature is dropping on the West Coast of the US? Oregon’s coastal zone is cooling at the rate of 37.1 degrees F per century (Minus 20.6 deg C per century). Coastal Washington state, and northern and mid-state of California are dropping like a rock, also.

At this rate of cooling, Oregon will be in a perpetual icy state by 2050, with an average temperature of 32 deg F or zero deg C.

R., Your fingernails are not digging into that slippery slope very well. And the skritching racket is very annoying. Your attempt at exoneration is ludicrous.
——————————
No need to exonerate anyone. Mann has displayed the fact that he understands the role of the sun in creating events such as the LIA, and also understands how pushing the level of CO2 beyond anything seen in at least 800,000 years might also affect the climate. Now, it appears we might get the chance to find out which one the climate is more sensitive to…or perhaps it will be a zero-sum game for a few decades.

jimmi_the_dalek is quite right:Rule 1: Always look at the original source
Rule 2: Do not believe media reports without checking

As an ink-stained wretch myself (and CAGW skeptic), I wholeheartedly agree. In this case, the various news outlets appear to have just lifted each other’s articles — no original research added. And the UK press is especially untrustworthy– yes, even worse than the American press!

And it all appears to go back to Benny Peiser, whose statement linking the Nature Geoscience paper to a supposed resurgence of the LIA was unsupported by anything in the actual article, which I read. I respectfully suggest Anthony look into this, as I quite admire his blog and hate to see misinformation get in here.

“Notwithstanding the unassociated assertions and filibustering preceding this last statement above, but, what do you cite as objective proof or evidence for this statement?”

The evidence for the MWP ( scant, questionable proxy evidence and non testable documentary evidence) is confined geographically. If you are suspect of extrapolating current thermometers over 1200 km, then you should be more suspect about a handful of proxies. Go look at any map of proxy locations. The LIA was confined to europe and had more to do with TSI changes, volcanic forcing and UV changes.

Neither of these has any bearing on the issue of AGW. That issue is
1. how MUCH warming will increased GHGs cause.

That question is logically and observationationally disconnected from both the LIA and the MWP.
despite what Mann and Gore say, they have nothing to do with AGW.

It isn’t the Gulf Stream that keeps the UK temperate really. It is due to our weather coming from the West really so off of the relatively warm Atlantic in winter and also due to the large scale planetary waves causing our weather to come from a SW direction on average. A significant contributor to these Rossby waves are the Rocky mountains, so we have the US to thank for some of our temperate climate.

When we get weather from the north it isn’t very temperate here as the last 2 winters have shown.

peakbear says:
October 10, 2011 at 10:02 pm
It isn’t the Gulf Stream that keeps the UK temperate really.
——-
No peak bear…it is…really. Shut down that lovely THC of which the Gulf Steam is part, and you’ll be getting bloody cold…really.

It’s interesting to compare the recent warm period to the 16th century. The first half of that century was very warm, in fact the summer of 1540 may have been warmer than 2003 in Europe. But then it all changed and there was a series of ice cold winters, and at the same time there was a multi year extremely severe drought in the sw US.

The data indicate that increased GHGs cause an amount of warming that may be slightly positive, may be close to zero, or may be zero or less…
—-
Uh, what kind of “warming” is “zero or less”? Negative warming? Is this some kind of tricky double-speak? GHG’s might cause negative warming…oh brother.

The data indicate that increased GHGs cause an amount of warming that may be slightly positive, may be close to zero, or may be zero or less…
—-
Uh, what kind of “warming” is “zero or less”? Negative warming? Is this some kind of tricky double-speak? GHG’s might cause negative warming…oh brother.
=================

Dodgy Geezer says:
October 10, 2011 at 12:15 pm
“…Britain should brace itself for another freezing winter with the return of La Niña, a climate phenomenon known to disrupt global weather, ministers have warned….”

Umm. If British Ministers tell you the sun goes down at night you should start preparing for 24 hours of daytime. They lie even when there is no need to, just to keep in habit. They are regularly beaten by bankers, estate agent and lawyers in truth contests. They would give Australian politicians a run for their money…
========================================

:) They wouldn’t even come close to our Prime Minister ‘Juliar’ and her pack of thieving lying sycophants.

R. Gates says:
October 10, 2011 at 5:14 pm
I am quite skeptical that Europe is in for 20-30 years of cooling, or anything approaching a “Little Ice Age”.
************************************************************
The whole NH hemisphere is heading downhill pretty fast.
CET records is a good proxy for NH record, global record follows the NH quite well. How to twist these facts will be interesting to watch.

From Jonathan Leake
Thanks to those who have commented on this article. However, there appears to be a common misunderstanding. My Sunday Times article was not about anthropogenic climate change. The phenomena mentioned in this article are natural and separate from climate change. They operate in parallel to climate change, in parallel to each other but, of course, each on very different time scales.
La Nina, for example, is really about weather. It’s part of a relatively short term natural cycle operating over periods of a few years.
It’s just one of many factors which together mean that weather is constantly showing a high level of variability. In other words, getting a cold winter or two does not tell us anything about climate change. It just tells us that weather changes a lot – which we already know.
Similarly, the research in Nature Geoscience about the changes in solar radiation, is also nothing to do with climate change. It’s an entirely separate effect happening in parallel. Scientists think its part of a 3-400 year cycle of changes in UV radiation. There’s a good article here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065
and the original is herehttp://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1282.html
It’s interesting to wonder if it will mitigate or amplify any effects from greenhouse gas emissions but I suspect no-one really knows yet.
The key point is that short term changes in the weather and long term changes in the climate are both driven by a complex mix of variables. Working out the most likely future trends is hard and takes long-term dedicated science. Reducing it all to an argument about climate change misses the real point which is that we should be trying to use the best science to assess objectively just how much of a problem all these effects really present to an increasingly crowded and interconnected world.
The science suggesting that the Earth faces significant warming remains very strong. If you disagree then you need good science to back your case. These other phenomena (La Nina, UV radiation etc) are interesting in their own right but are simply not relevant to that discussion.
Jonathan Leake

Not really. The hard science part (about CO2 absorption) only suggests a moderate warming. We don’t really know for sure if even burning all the remaining known fossil fuels would be enough to compensate for a LIA-like multi century cold period.

The science that suggests significant warming is much “softer” science, based on incomplete computer models.

The two aspects ‘weather’ and ‘climate change’ are not so separate….firstly, the IPCC (now) defines climate change as ‘both’ natural and man-made combined…..the reason being that as you rightly point out, both occur in parallel, but they are not distinguishable. The problem lies with determining how much of the GHG effect, which is measured way up in the atmosphere as a radiative forcing effect actually gets through to a warming at the surface…IPCC models have large variations in this factor – between 2-3 times, hence the large variability in the estimates of warming from doubling CO2 of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C.

In order to tell which parameters of the models are the most accurate, the science has to look at the actual rise of temperatures over the last several decades to get a handle on the feedbacks – and here is where the controversy arises. In my book of 2009, ‘Chill’ (of which the Times was sent 4 copies over as many weeks as requested -but never reviewed!), I detail that controversy within the published science, much of which the IPCC downplayed and concluded that a largely natural ‘signal’ over the latter part of the 20th century had been misinterpreted as support for the higher sensitivity in some models. The test of whether I was right would come when the natural cycle turned down – as it has done, and lo, not only does the UK, USA, and China get severe winters as predictable, but the oceans stop increasing their heat content and tropospheric temperatures flatten out. If the cycle continues to fall as the Sun goes into a grand minimum, then it will get cold for 30-40 years. That is also ‘climate change’, even by IPCC definitions, but the AGW component actually works to ameliorate the cold – just at the time when the world needs its food production to stay bouyant (I am not hopeful of the latter).

Matt G says: October 10, 2011 at 3:01 pm “1) How can this only be regional when during the instrumental record, the same regions concerned have behaved like wise with global temperatures. 2) Instrumental records since the LIA (1850?s) have showed increased temperatures in all global site regions.”

Robert Austin says: October 10, 2011 at 3:25 pm “steven mosher says:”

RoyFOMR says: October 10, 2011 at 5:03 pm “Steven Mosher says:”

_Jim says: October 10, 2011 at 5:33 pm “steven mosher says”

Ron House says: October 10, 2011 at 6:19 pm “Steven Mosher said:”

**************

steven mosher says: October 10, 2011 at 9:44 pm

_jim. “what do you cite as objective proof or evidence for this statement?”

Steve, there’s a lot of good scientists listed here, who responded to you because we appreciate you. But the evidence of this list in itself says that you are simply not paying attention to the evidence in this instance.

There is global evidence for the MWP (however much you may regard it as “inferior”, it still exists) and you have been pointed towards some of it.

“Notwithstanding the unassociated assertions and filibustering preceding this last statement above, but, what do you cite as objective proof or evidence for this statement?”

The evidence for the MWP ( scant, questionable proxy evidence and non testable documentary evidence) is confined geographically. If you are suspect of extrapolating current thermometers over 1200 km, then you should be more suspect about a handful of proxies. Go look at any map of proxy locations. The LIA was confined to europe and had more to do with TSI changes, volcanic forcing and UV changes. </blockquote"

To support your sweeping assertions, please list the Earth's geographic locations by Marsden Square which you have found to be devoid of evidence of 1. the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and/or 2. the Little Ice Age (LIA). Number ranges will be adequate for this purpose.

“Notwithstanding the unassociated assertions and filibustering preceding this last statement above, but, what do you cite as objective proof or evidence for this statement?”

The evidence for the MWP ( scant, questionable proxy evidence and non testable documentary evidence) is confined geographically. If you are suspect of extrapolating current thermometers over 1200 km, then you should be more suspect about a handful of proxies. Go look at any map of proxy locations. The LIA was confined to europe and had more to do with TSI changes, volcanic forcing and UV changes.

”

To support your sweeping assertions, please list the Earth’s geographic locations by Marsden Square which you have found to be devoid of evidence of 1. the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and/or 2. the Little Ice Age (LIA). Number ranges will be adequate for this purpose.

richard telford October 10, 2011 at 11:41 amI don’t think David Whitehouse understands probabilities. If I predict that there is only a one in six chance of a six occurring when a fair die is rolled, am I incorrect when a six does occur?

No, of course not, but if you bet against a six, and a six occurs, you were wrong to bet against it. You couldn’t have known that you were wrong, but you were wrong nonetheless.

steven mosher says:
October 10, 2011 at 9:44 pm
……..
Mr. Mosher
-It is assumed that atmospheric temperatures do not (and most likely can not) affect paleo- and archaeo- -magnetic dating samples.
-Dr. Loehle compiled his global temperature anomaly independently of my analysis of geomagnetic records. Two sets of data show good agreement covering period of two millennia, both indicating existence MWP ant LIA.http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
This is not to say that the geomagnetic field changes controls global temperature. However, the geomagnetic field does, to a degree, mirror solar magnetic activity, not necessarily sunspot but stronger bursts of the coronal mass ejection, CMEs.
I have tracked output from the GM station at Tromso, Norway, since the beginning of the year (graphs 5&6 in http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MFc.htm ) and they do show that after every solar CME’ burst, the geomagnetic field went up by a small notch.
How these changes are, if at all, linked to the temperature changes is uncertain, but evidence is sufficiently strong not to be ignored.
We may not have the answer, but that is not a good reason not search for it.

So what I want to know from the climate boffins is exactlty how much CO2 we need to inject into the atmosphere to make things like the Little Ice Age a practical impossibility in the future.

The Marinoan and Varangian global snowball-earth ice ages occurred around 650-750 MYa during which atmospheric CO2 levels were >10,000 ppm, so our climate boffins will have to aim north of this figure. In fact the Huronian ice age at around 2 billion years ago took place with an atmosphere at least 10 % CO2.

steven mosher says: October 10, 2011 at 9:44 pm_jim. “what do you cite as objective proof or evidence for this statement?”
The evidence for the MWP ( scant, questionable proxy evidence and non testable documentary evidence) is confined geographically.

To echo what many others (Lucy Skywalker, MattG etc) have pointed out, the CO2 science website has a database of (to date) 1015 published scientific papers – i.e. ones that got past your pals’ review – attesting to the MWP everywhere on earth.

To quote from this website frontpage link to the MWP published paper database:

Medieval Warm Period Project”
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 1015 individual scientists from 584 research institutions in 44 different countries … and counting! This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record comes from Rumailiah River Floodplain, North-western Coast of Syria. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.

Jonathan Leake says:
October 11, 2011 at 12:02 amFrom Jonathan Leake
Thanks to those who have commented on this article. However, there appears to be a common misunderstanding. My Sunday Times article was not about anthropogenic climate change. The phenomena mentioned in this article are natural and separate from climate change. They operate in parallel to climate change, in parallel to each other but, of course, each on very different time scales.
La Nina, for example, is really about weather. It’s part of a relatively short term natural cycle operating over periods of a few years.

Concerning La Nina being “just weather” that’s not the story we get from many warmista contributors here. Not so long ago (while the earth still was warming) it was proposed that continued warming could result in a continuous el Nino state. (ENSO is a nonlinear oscillator so this is an inherent impossiblity.) More recently Bob Tisdale posted with detailed evidence that the warming since the 1970s is almost all attributable to an increased prevalence of el Nino events. The warmistas replied in unison that “el Nino is the mechanism of CO2 warming”.

Bob Tisdale also points out ( http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/) that alternate warming and cooling phases of the PDO correspond to periods of alternate dominance of el Nino and La Nina.

So ENSO cannot be claimed as “just weather” – it is one of the earth’s most dominant climate drivers.

What on earth are you talking about???? I have lived in northern Norway many years. Along the coast it is quite mild in the winther. (For a Norwegian). Go straight east some miles and the temperature plummets to Siberian levels. Where do you get your facts from? Al Gore?

Wolf Creek ski resort in Southwest Colorado, where we live, announced the “earliest ever recorded” opening of the skiing season, due to 8 inches of snow that fell on October 8th.

Meanwhile, traveling on “working vacation”, we experienced yesterday freezing temperatures in Cetinje, historic former capital of Montenegro, where normal average temperature in October should be above +20 degrees Celsius.

Last two or three years were marked by the record fish and lobster harvest all over the world. Fish and lobster eat creatures that eat phytoplankton and sea weeds, while phytoplankton and see weeds eat… carbon dioxide and sunlight.

Never forget: Al Gore inherited millions from his father, who made his fortune in tobacco industry, As Russians say, “Whose cow is to moo here?”

It’s going to be pretty grim here in Britain when 40% of our conventional power stations have been closed down under EU edicts, and Chris Huhne’s windmills stop spinning (as wind turbines always do in utra-cold anticyclonic winter weather).

Indeed! But be consoled that you will still be performing a useful function. That of a “horrible example”: what happens when a country buys into and forms economic policy based on the cAGW thesis.

“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. –The Independent, 20 March 2000”.
Hopefully Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, will now be Dr David Viner, retired, former research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.
Reality can now, get a look in, and please will any alleged climate scientists stop confusing weather with climate.

Actually if you look at the big picture, Earth is a natural ice planet, obviously the Northern Hemisphere is more effected by glacial periods, that only occur after years of cold winters and short summers. Warming has occurred before a mini ice age, like the Medieval Warm Period.
And the Gulf Stream stops or is diverted. Problem is human civilization has mainly been treated to an interglacial. So all the BS about sea rising etc., is far from the reality. In a full glacial period
sea levels drop dramatically, as more water is taken up by ice sheets, and less evaporation of course. But – despite the larger population now, yes, a mini ice age will be detrimental to growing some foods. Not impossible, but highly likely. All these alarmist are saying is ‘We told you so?’
But the reasons are bent as the crooked scientists that say warming is caused by human activity.
They have just passed the carbon tax in the House of Reps, it will pass the Senate, but the vote in the lower house was 74 – 72. One Liberal MP had been banned for 24 hours, and if she had been there the vote would have been 74-73. Watch out for more fireworks, as it seems the Kyoto
11 conference won’t happen.

Alexander Feht says:
October 11, 2011 at 2:25 pmwe experienced yesterday freezing temperatures in Cetinje , historic former capital of Montenegro….
I hope you went up the Lovcen mountain from where on a clear day you can see most of Montenegro, Italy, Croatia and Albania. If you are still around don’t miss the old town of Kotor . Btw. it was snowing to the east of the capital Podgorica only a day earlier.

…
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. –The Independent, 20 March 2000″.
Hopefully Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, will now be Dr David Viner, retired, former research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.

Not a prayer. His half-baked hyperbole was in support of The Narrative™ of the Noble (Common) Cause. That’s a free pass and Permanent Falsification Exemption. Unless the mockery gets too loud, and he becomes an embarrassment. But the CAGW Team is almost impervious to embarrassment, of course. It also has no shame, or willingness to be held accountable, or …

“The fact is that nobody knows if the forthcoming winter will be severe or mild.”

From forecasting short term solar variables, the cold blasts can be timed with great accuracy. AO and NAO status strongly affect their severity. For last winter, I saw below normals from the last week in Nov till Xmas, with normals through Jan/Feb, but with a cool spot later in Feb (UK).
I`m looking at one month in particular being well below normals this coming winter.

Sun Spot says:
October 10, 2011 at 3:09 pm
@Dave Springer says: October 10, 2011 at 11:48 am
“I agree with your statement. An addition of CO2 to our atmosphere is not ony benificial, it might save us from the catastrophy of an ice age. It’s pathetic that science spend billions on researching CO2′s effect on weather/climate and we still don’t have a clue as to what causes an icae age. Its an ice age that will kill billions not CO2.”

CO2 in any amount isn’t going to stop an ice age from coming. No one has been able to adequately explain why there is a rapid collapse into an ice age (in as little as a matter of decades) when CO2 levels are at their peak for that interglacial and don’t decline substantially until about 3000 years after the start of that ice age (and, no, Milankovitch cycles cannot explain that sudden descent). If CO2 theory was correct, then there is no way that an ice age could start that rapidly (almost instantly in geologic, and even climatic, terms) with all that warming potential from CO2.

Actually if you look at the big picture, earth is a natural ice planet…

The present configuration of continents brought about by tectonic movement favours cold and ice. The poles are opposites – the north pole is a sea surrounded by land, the south pole an island continent surrounded by ocean. In the case of the south pole, as has been explained by Bill Illis, the Antarctic is isolated by the circumpolar current from any warming effect from currents from the north. (Before Antarctica broke from Africa a southward current warmed Antarctica which was then fully forested.)

At the north pole the polar lake configuration gives rise to instability and potential positive feedbacks and consequent oscillation in the extent of both sea ice and glaciation and snow cover (i.e. it is an excitable medium) thus the endless fun in guessing sea ice from year to year. A large enough oscillation swing is able to set off a transition to a colder glacial period – hopping from one attrator to another.

Since the continents move tectonically at about the speed that your fingernails grow, it will be a while before this situation changes. Talk of global warming is thus indeed a tad premature.

Hi, phlogiston on 13 Oct @ 2 am. However, recall the North Pole is not a continent like the Antarctic. The Arctic Circle effects lots of countries and islands, especially with the shorter and longer days of sunlight? But Australia, not New Zealand, has been occupied by humans for about 50 – 60,000 years and we are just out of the ring of fire. The only glacial regions known are in Tasmania that was joined to the mainland until the last full glacial period ended around 10,000 years ago, and on top of the Australian Alps that are a high altitude. But Australia was also joined to Papua New Guinea too.

However, the Panama canal wasn’t built then, maybe that will keep invigorating the flow of the Gulf Stream that was affected during the last ice age and helped to freeze those land masses by stopping or diverting its warmer waters?

Hi Brian, well it was a thought. The latest is that the Gulf Stream has stopped or diverted because of the oil spill in the Gulf? I am not that informed but if the oil kept to the surface waters, it would drive the warmer gulf stream flow down further? Maybe some one can comment on that?

No, that’s not the latest. Oldie-von-moldie nonsense, long debunked. The GS is just fine. And the oil pretty much vanished, much faster than was thought possible. Seems the non-stop natural seeps in the Gulf have bred some hungry and efficient bacteria, who accepted the BP contribution as “business as usual”.